extras

notes

COLDINGHAM ABBEY

Coldingham is the last of the double monasteries—including Barking, Ely, and Whitby—on which Bede focuses his attention. Unlike the others, Coldingham is depicted as a den of iniquity, whose monastic inhabitants had lapsed into vanity, worldliness, and sin. Bede was a reform-minded monk. Late in his life, he wrote a letter to Egbert, the Bishop (later Archbishop) of York, urging reform of the Northumbrian Church, which in his opinion had become corrupt and venal. The story of Coldingham reflects Bede’s concerns about abuses of the monastic life. It also may reveal his true opinion of the double monasteries, which offered accomodation for both men and women. Coldingham was destroyed in abou 680. A century later, in 787, the Second Council of Nicaea prohibited the founding of double monasteries, citing them as “a cause of scandal and a stumbling block for ordinary folk” (see Introduction, “Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England”).

(1) hīs temporibus: “at about this time”

Colūdī Vrbem:Coldingham, in Berwickshire, Scotland. Coldingham was presided over by an abbess named Æbbe, the sister of King Oswiu of Northumberland.

suprā meminimus: mentioned in 4.19.5 as the monastery Æthelthryth first entered as a nun

per culpam incūriae:per = “through, because of”

(2) Quod ... advertere: This sentence is an indirect statement with the basic structure: omnēs potuērunt advertere id [=quod] contigisse. Bede likes to begin sentences with a connective relative like quod (“which”), but it is easiest to translate here as if id (“it”) was the accusative of the accusative-infinitive construction.

pūniendīs: dative of possession after defuit (AG 373.b): “for those to be punished.”

quā: the antecedent is admonitiō. The ablative is an ablative of means (“by means of which”), and the relative pronoun quā introduces a relative clause of purpose (AG 531.2) with the subjunctive verb āverterent.

instar Ninevitārum:instar + genitive = “like”: “like the people of Nineveh.” Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire; its destruction is prophesied in the Biblical Book of Nahum.

etiam sī ... trānsigere: rearrange as: etiam sī iubeas [mē] peragere tōtam noctem standō in precibus, [aut] trānsigere integram septimānam abstinendō. Such extreme forms of penance as are described here were typical of the Irish monastic tradition that was imported to Northumbria from Iona. Such practices had their origins among the ascetic monks of Egypt.

(10) totā septimānā: ablative for accusative of extent of time (“for an entire week”).

(24) prōrsus: this word is an intensifier: omnēs prōrsus could be translated “every last one of them,” keeping in mind that the verbs torpent and vigilant, plural in Latin, would have to be translated as singular (“every last one of them is...”).

(25) in ... cubīlia: the preposition and its object are separated by the modifying genitives; cubīlia has negative connotations here: “dens”

virginēs quoque: “even virgins.” The lack of a strong conjunction (asyndeton) is an indication of the vehemence of this speech.

vacant: “have free time”

ad vicem: “like, in the manner of” + genitive

in perīculum suī statūs: this compressed statement (“to the peril of their status”) means “putting their virginity at risk.”

externōrum ... virōrum: “of strange men” (Colgrave-Mynors); externus can mean “foreign,” but here could mean men from outside of the monastery.

plūrimō tempore: ablative for accusative of extent of time (“for a very long time”)

(34) admonērēmus ... quam: an indirect exclamation, structured like an indirect question in which the question is a secondary object (AG 574, with note): “to warn the reader of the works of the Lord, how terrible [he is]...” The verb esse is omitted from the indirect exclamation.

nōs: direct object of corripiat, afflīgat and tollat, the subject of which is īra